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The Essentials of Method 



IN 



Teaching Children to Read 



§ 



BY 



JOSEPH H. WADE, A.M.. Ph.D. 



m 



New York, Cincinnati, Chicago: 
BENZIGER BROTHERS, 

Publishers of Bensiger s Magasine 



THE 
ESSENTIALS OF METHOD 

IN 

TEACHING CHILDREN TO READ 



BY 

JOSEPH H. WADE, A.M., Ph.D. 



New York Cincinnati Chicago 
BENZIGER BROTHERS 

Publishers of Beiiziger's Magazine 
1912 



.^'^ 



^>A 



This monograph contains the underlying principles and the 
practical methods and devices in teaching children to read 
which have been presented by the writer in lectures and con- 
ferences given at various times to the following groups of 
students and teachers in New York City : — 

The principals and teachers of the Public and Corporate 
Schools of School Districts i, g, lo, and ii, the Extension 
Classes in the College of the City of New York, the Class in 
Pedagogy of St. Francis Xavier's College, the Sisters of 
Charity at the Catholic Orphan Asylum, the Sisters of Mercy 
at the Institution of Mercy, the Ursuline Sisters in the Con- 
vent of St. Ursula, the Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, 
and the Franciscan Sisters of St. Anthony's School. 



Copyright, 1912, by Benziger Brothers 

e)CLA315981 



THE ESSENTIALS OF METHOD IN 
TEACHING CHILDREN TO READ 



Reading may be considered as the foundation of all our 
school work. If this foundation is not strong and lasting 
the education that is built thereon is necessarily weak and 
shifting. Occasionally we hear reading described as a getting 
of thought from the printed page, and everything is labelled 
reading that involves the sounding of words without much 
reference to the comprehension of the content, or the amount 
of mental activity involved. The fact is, however, that reading is 
not getting thought from the printed page for the very good 
reason that there is no thought thereon. There are symbols, 
words, which may or may not arouse mental activity or interest 
in the pupil, as his mind possesses or does not possess the ideas 
represented by such words and symbols. This essential truth 
must be fully appreciated by the teacher of reading who 
would make her work successful with children of the first 
school years. 

Teachers who have had successful experience in the work 
realize that primary reading presents one of the most diffi- 
cult problems for solution in the whole range of teaching. 
More time and thought have been devoted to this feature of 
school work by practical and theoretical educators than to 
any other subject in the curriculum, and, as a natural result, 

3 



we have methods and devices ad nauseam. With ahnost every 
new series of readers, some novel and only way of teaching 
children to read is advertised and heralded as the best, though 
a close examination of the content and method of many of 
these readers often disclose little of real novelty in the series 
beyond its name. 

Occasionally golden promises are made by the heralds of a 
new series to teach all children to read fluently in two or three 
years, and this marvel is seemingly accomplished when half 
of the entire school time is given to the work. The same 
marvellous result might be accomplished in teaching children 
to read a foreign language, if an equally large proportion of 
the time was devoted to the subject, to the practical exclusion 
of other important subjects of the curriculum. Unfortunately 
the real aim of the reading work is frequently neglected in 
the effort to cover a great amount of material. This real aim 
is the training of children to think and to express their thoughts 
in language clear and appropriate. The most successful 
methods, those that have lived and will continue to live be- 
cause of real intrinsic merit, recognize the great truth that it 
is preferable to make haste slowly in the first years, than to 
attempt to cover an extensive field by artificial methods. 

It is not the quantity of reading in the first years that counts ; 
rather it is the assimilation and mind training that should ever 
be kept in view. The successful teacher recognizes this fact 
and aims to keep the word-study an interesting and profitable 
exercise, instead of hurrying through the pages of a book. 
With such teachers the ability to read is acquired by their 
pupils as a natural result of a real interest in the content of 
the reading material. 

We occasionally hear of the amount of reading accom- 
plished by the seven and eight year old child, as if that were 
the summum honum, but such statements give us no idea of 
the amount of content the children have assimilated or made 

4 



practical use of in their growing vocabulary. In this con- 
nection it is well for the teacher to appreciate the fact that 
a child's reading vocabulary cannot be increased by twenty 
or thirty new words every week. If, as Professor Palmer 
states in his " Self Cultivation in EngHsh," the educated adult 
should aim constantly to add two new words a week to his 
working vocabulary, how important is it that we should not 
over-reach ourselves in training children to read by adding 
an excessive number of new words in the first two years of 
the course. 

There is one criterion of the quality as well as of the quan- 
tity of reading words to be taught in the first years which has 
stood the test of ages, and this in the words of Professor 
^IcMurry, is "' to adapt the printed words and sentences, the 
reading material, to the child's experiences and activities. The 
closer this relationship the more rapidly will the child master 
a substantial knowledge of word form.'' 

This is one reason why classics for children's reading should 
be real children's classics; otherwise a true appreciation of the 
content will never be acquired. !Many pupils seemingly pro- 
gress rapidly in reading such classics, who in reality remain 
ignorant of the story content. A remarkable instance of this 
too prevalent mistake is given by Dr. Shields in his " Making 
and Unmaking of a Dullard." He describes how, in attempt- 
ing to force upon him reading beyond his powers of com- 
prehension, the teacher merely succeeded in creating a hope- 
less confusion in his child mind, in humiliating him before his 
classmates and finally in driving him from the school labelled 
an impossible dullard. It was not until he was approaching 
young manhood that Dr. Shields ever acquired confidence in 
his ability to understand and assimilate the content of the 
school reader. This mistake may be expected whenever we 
confront the child with reading selections which, though classic, 
are foreign to his experiences and to his powers of constructive 

5 



imagination, and far beyond the limitation of his vocabulary. 
Especially is this the case, even with the simplest children's 
classics,, whenever teachers attempt to present the reading les- 
son without bringing to their pupils in an interesting manner 
the reaHzation of the content of the literature to be read. On 
two features of the work rests the success of the reading 
lesson. First, reading lessons with a vocabulary suitable to the 
child's mind, expressing a content that can be readily appre- 
ciated, and second, the teacher's explanation, interesting and 
clear to the children with the fullest opportunity afforded for 
silent reading and appreciation. If these two essentials were 
observed by authors of school readers and by teachers, we 
would have no such experiences as come to all who carefully 
examine into the reading results in the first year of school. It 
is on these features of the work that City Superintendent Max- 
well, in a recent conference, laid the greatest stress. Speaking 
of the intellectual habits that should be developed through the 
teaching of reading, he grouped them as follows : 

1. The habit of taking in as much of a line or sentence in 
a single glance as possible, and then speaking it aloud with 
proper expression. 

2. The habit of making out the pronunciation of unfamiliar 
words from the sounds of single letters and phonograms. 

3. The habit of getting the meaning of what is read. 

4. Expressing that meaning so that it would be understood 
and appreciated by others. 

5. Getting the meaning of words. 

6. Analyzing the matter read into its different topics and 
grouping details around them. 

If teachers would only build their work on such simple but 
strong foundations many of the failures in reading, not only 
of the first few years, but of the entire school course, would 
be eliminated. 

On the contrary we frequently find mistakes in method 

6 



which a Httle real knowledge of the processes of development 
of the child mind would eliminate. Thus, we find a teacher 
assuming that her pupils understand and assimilate the con- 
tent of lessons that deal with experiences foreign to the child's 
life and environment. Sometimes children will read such les- 
sons with fluency, but a few well chosen questions at the con- 
clusion of the lesson, especially if the questions are asked by 
a casual visitor instead of by the class teacher, will disclose 
the fact that the pupils had read only words without meaning 
to them. 

Such a reading lesson is a failure, no matter how fluently 
the words and sentences are recited by the pupils. Such a 
lesson is sometimes a mere memory exercise on a story re- 
peated or read in varying form^ by teacher or pupils until the 
interest is deadened. A teacher should be quick to notice when 
the interest begins to lag. If the story is a good one, if the 
content is rich in that which interests the child, the first read- 
ing will hold the attention of the class ; but when the same story 
is repeated in sHghtly varying form, sometimes for several 
days, the teacher is only feeding her pupils with dead sea fruit. 
They are not being quickened to thought and the words lose 
their life and vividness. 

If teachers wish to assure themselves that the pupils of the 
first or second years really recognize the words of the lesson, 
let these words be written on the board in a transposed order, 
then by means of the pointer the teacher can form new sen- 
tences from the words. If the children read the sentences 
thus formed, then the teacher can feel assured that the words 
of the lesson are really known. I recall Hstening to a lesson 
which was read so fluently that I was amazed that first year 
children could master the varied and rather diflicult vocabulary 
of the story. When the lesson was half completed, however, 
I asked the children to close their books and called for volun- 
teers to continue the lesson from memory. A majority of the 

7 



pupils raised their hands, and several children called upon 
repeated word for word the story to the end, and yet the 
teacher had stated the lesson was new. I discovered that the 
method of teaching this lesson had been for the teacher 
to read the story over and over until the children knew the 
words, phrases, and sentences by heart. 

I recall another experience with first year children. The 
reading lesson was a story continuing for several pages. Many 
of the images and ideas expressed were beyond the power of 
the children to assimilate or appreciate, and each page averaged 
probably half a dozen new w^ords. Pupils read on with seem- 
ing fluency, but the absence of a close study of the lesson 
seemed to indicate that the exercise was more a memory reci- 
tation than a reading lesson. At my request the teacher wrote 
the first thirty words of the lesson on the board in an order 
different from that observed in the story. The pupils were 
then asked to volunteer to read the words from the board, and, 
of the first five selected by the teacher, every one read the 
words, not as they were written on the board, but as they 
appeared in the story in the book. Then when certain words 
from the board were combined into short sentences not found 
in the reading lesson, scarcely a pupil in the class could read 
the sentences. This showed conclusively that there was very 
little word recognition, that the teacher was mistaking mem- 
orization for reading, and that the recitation was the result 
of a cumulative repetition of the story, with little or no under- 
standing of the content. Yet the teacher of the class had 
probably given more time and labor to the work than nine 
out of ten teachers of reading give in the ordinary program. 
I speak of these instances, because, with the interesting content 
usually found in good classic stories for children, the teacher 
who observes the right method will succeed in obtaining real 
and effective word recognition at the same time that she 
arouses the right kind of interest in the lessons. Such failures 

8 



are due, as Superintendent Hughes says in his admirable Uttle 
book, " Teaching to Read," to the mistaken idea held by some 
teachers and some educators that the aim should be to train 
pupils to read aloud, instead of teaching them to read, and this 
mistake is also pointed out by Sarah Louise Arnold and Pro- 
fessor Huey. Such teaching either utterly neglects, or at best 
minimizes, in the first year silent reading as an efficient aid to 
good oral reading. As a result of this neglect the child in the 
latter years of the course is unable to grasp the content, 
not only of the literature placed before him, but of the sup- 
plementary reading in history and geography. 

From the very inception of the child's schooling through the 
entire course, the essential purpose of the work in reading falls 
under the following headings : 

1. Teaching the pupils to master the mechanics of reading 
as rapidly and as naturally as possible. 

2. Leading them to an appreciation of what is meant by 
real reading instead of the mere calling off of words. 

3. Training them so that reading becomes a source of in- 
tellectual profit and pleasure. 

4. As the highest aim, the development of a love for good 
literature, by inspiring the right kind of interest in the literature 
that is best adapted to their years. 

Though we may all agree that the above undoubtedly mark 
the essential aims in the work, the young teacher is often dis- 
mayed by the diverse and numerous methods of teaching pri- 
mary reading, each one of which is proclaimed as the only 
correct way. The fact is, as Stanley Hall states, " there is no 
one and only orthodox way of teaching and learning this 
greatest and hardest of all arts." Above all it should be borne 
in mind that the stated use of any one method does not pre- 
clude the incidental use of any, and perhaps of all others." 
Such words must come as a benediction to those practical 
teachers who are weary of the claims of advocates of this or 

9 



that so-called system of reading advertised as the latest and 
surest method. The teacher of successful experience who is 
looking for real and permanent results knows that many so- 
called new methods are not new at all. Occasionally we have 
some new application of an old method, but to the class teacher 
it is indifferent whether this or that method is advertised as 
the newest, but it is important that the results obtained be 
real and permanent. 

In this chaos of conflicting claims the one great truth is 
often lost sight of, viz: that it is the teacher, and not the 
method, that counts for success or failure in the work. A 
teacher who does not see the real purpose of the reading lesson, 
who aims to cover so many pages per week by means of some 
method or device that she does not clearly grasp, is not attain- 
ing a real success. But the teacher who understands the pur- 
pose and foresees the end, who uses the method, be it phonic,- 
word or sentence, with intelligence and judgment, must suc- 
ceed. This is one of the principles of pedagogy that has stood 
and will stand for all time; that it is the teacher, and not the 
hook or method, that counts for success. To-day no one pre- 
sumes to speak in praise of the old alphabet method, yet the 
great majority of teachers of the present day were probably 
taught to read by this obsolete method. In fact, with all our 
experimenting on first and second year children with this or 
that new method, it is doubtful whether our graduates of to-day 
read with any more appreciation, if as much, as did the grad- 
uates of thirty years ago. A few years ago a principal visited a 
school which had been recommended to him as one in which 
excellent reading could be observed. In many of the classes 
the reading was excellent in enunciation and pronunciation, 
and fluent in delivery. Then the visitor asked permission to 
question the children on their reading, and the test was made 
in an 8 B class. The pupils had read with marked expression 
Hawthorne's " Great Stone Face," but when the books were 

10 



closed and they were asked what the story meant to them, the 
theme of the classic, not a single pupil in the class could be 
induced to speak. The reading had been, to a great extent, 
merely a sounding of words, and yet the question asked should 
not have been a difficult one for children of the highest grade 
to answer. In fact, a true reading of the lesson would have 
prepared the children for just such questioning. Long before 
the renaissance of literature reading in our schools pupils 
who had entered the preparatory class of the City College 
and the lowest grade of the Normal College were asked just 
such questions by the English tutors. I have papers at hand 
which show that such knowledge was required from pupils who 
had entered from the public schools after a seven-year course. 
Certainly with our eight-year course we ought to cover at 
least a year's work beyond what was accomplished in the 
past. In many schools in New York City this is accomplished, 
and it is because of the excellence and thoroughness of the 
teacher's work. The problem in elementary education still 
remains the great problem that President Butler sees in higher 
education, " To find the teacher " — not to prove the method 
at hand the only way. 

While the influence of a teacher counts most seriously in the 
first years of school, the habit of reading with thought and 
attention which is inculcated at the beginning must continue 
and develop through the course. The two distinct phases of 
reading which must be considered are: 

1. Learning to read — the work of the first three or four 
years of school. In this work stress is laid upon the so-called 
mechanics of reading, enunciation, pronunciation, articulation, 
expression, emphasis, etc. Success here depends upon the 
interest of the presentation and the thoroughness of the drill. 

2. Reading to acquire knowledge and to appreciate litera- 
ture. This is the work of the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth 
years, and its success or failure depends on the foundation 

II 



) 



that has been laid in the first years, the reading material that 
is presented to the pupil, and the teacher's ability to awaken 
interest in good literature. 

In the first phase of the work the good teacher aims to train 
the child to master the written or printed symbols of the 
words as quickly as possible. 

The pupils come to school with a speaking vocabulary rang- 
ing from four hundred to six hundred words, according to 
their home environment. The teacher's task is mainly to lead 
her pupils to recognize the symbols of the ideas they possess 
— she is gradually converting many of the words of their 
speaking vocabulary into a reading vocabular}\ When the 
children come from homes where a foreign language is 
spoken and from street associations where a patois is com- 
monly used, the teacher's task is very difficult. With such 
pupils she must build up both a speaking and a reading vocab- 
ulary, but, though more difficult, the work with such pupils is 
along the same general lines followed in teaching children of 
English-speaking parents to read. There must be a greater 
stress on the phonic drills and exercises wath the foreign 
pupils, but the word method and the sentence method are 
equally essential in developing the understanding of the content 
and in training to correct forms of expression with English- 
speaking as well as with foreign children. 

Before taking up in detail the essential features in teaching 
reading to the pupils of the first years, it is well to recognize 
that the order of development is as follows : 

1. The idea or object should precede the word and its 
symbol. 

2. The verb as the soul of a sentence is of first importance. 

3. Talking and reading by the child are generally more use- 
ful than talking and reading by the teacher. 

4. That, as the pupil is trained in his first reading by imita- 
tion, it is imperative that the teacher should speak clearly 

12 



and distinctly so as to present a uniformly correct model to her 
class. 

These are the simple principles that guide the efficient 
teacher in her preparation and presentation of the reading 
lesson, and divorced from the technicalities and involved ratio- 
cinations of a pedagogy that sometimes merely befogs the mind, 
or serves as an empty symbol for examination purposes, these 
principles outline good method in reading. If the pupil always 
understood and assimilated what he read, if correct models 
of enunciation and pronunciation were always presented by 
the teacher, if when a pupil read orally he was compelled to 
read so that all could hear and follow him without straining, 
how rapid would be the real progress in this subject. Accept- 
ing these principles as the fundamentals of successful work, 
the next step is to consider the other essentials of method in 
teaching reading to primary pupils. These essentials are : 

1. Teaching or developing the new words that appear in 
each lesson. 

2. Drilling on these new w^ords, and on especially selected 
review words that appear in the lesson, so as to obtain ready 
recognition. 

3. Phonic work. Drills in enunciation, pronunciation, artic- 
ulation, and blend work — very important. 

4. The reading of the lesson by the pupils under careful 
supervision of the teacher, insisting on a natural expression, 
and training the children to read as if they meant to tell some- 
thing to their hearers. Stumbling and halting delivery never 
should be accepted. In this feature of the work the dram- 
atization of certain stories and poems gives effective aid to 
the development of correct expression, and serves to eliminate 
the lifeless calHng of words which is sometimes labelled 
" reading." 

These are the essentials which every authority on reading 
insists upon, though they are expressed occasionally in dift'erent 

13 



phraseology. Thus Professor Barrett in his "Practical Ped- 
agogy" speaks of the essentials as word mastery, sight read- 
ing, or recognizing and calling at sight short sentences as 
wholes, getting the words from the printed page, and inter- 
preting or oral expression of the content. Professor White 
described them as: 

1. Recognition at sight of the printed or written words. 

2. A knowledge of their meaning and use. 

3. Oral reading or training to correct and facile utterance. 
No pupil should be asked to read a lesson until the new 

words have been explained, developed, and mastered. Though 
this work may seem to delay the completion of the lesson, no 
teacher who realizes that quality rather than quantity leads 
naturally and quickly to clear appreciation and correct ex- 
pression, will ever consider this task as a useless expenditure 
of time. In this feature of her work the teacher is basing 
her method on the fact that reading is a process of thinking. 
As Miss Laing, in her excellent exposition of methods in read- 
ing, points out, " Conducting a reading lesson is conducting, 
drilling, shaping, helping forward a process of thinking that is 
going on in the mind of each individual in the class." The 
teacher's success depends upon her careful study of the child's 
capabilities to understand, and her intelligent assistance by 
question and explanation, or by illustration of the meaning. 
It is easy to appreciate, therefore, the fact that the true method 
will be a combination of the word, sentence, and phonic 
methods, developing that power side by side with ability to 
express the content. 

While the phonic work in these first years famiHarizes the 
children quickly and thoroughly with the elemental sounds, the 
teacher should avoid the purely artificial and mechanical in her 
phonic drills and exercises. Such mechanical work may 
count for something in the training for clear enunciation and 
distinct articulation, but it means nothing in developing the 

14 



thought power of the child, and this should go side by side 
with the other phases of the work. Some of the reasons given 
by Professor Hughes for insisting upon the importance of 
intelligent phonic work are, that such work develops the pupil's 
self-activity from the very beginning of his reading, awakens 
the child's interest by operations of a constructive character, 
co-ordinates the reading, spelling, and composition more nat- 
urally and logically than any other method, and trains to cor- 
rect forms of enunciation, pronunciation, and articulation. 

Incidentally it may be noted that the excessive use of dia- 
critical marks should be avoided as they tend to make the word 
form more complex, therefore, more difficult to recognize 
easily and readily. The recent report of the Committee of the 
National Education Association, which has been working on 
this problem for some time, wdll probably have a very vital 
influence on this question of diacritical marking. The Com- 
mittee consisted of City Superintendent Maxwell, Dean Bal- 
liet of the New York University of the School of Pedagogy, 
Dr. Vaile of Oak Park, Illinois, President Seely of the State 
Teachers' College, Iowa, and Melville Dewey of New York 
State. This committee in aiming to make pronunciation less 
difficult for the children in the schools has recommended that 
all but one of the diacritical marks, which have been proven 
stumbling blocks for our beginners, shall be eliminated. Of 
course, a reform recommended by such powerful names in the 
world of pedagogy will be eventually accompHshed, but it will 
take time, for diacritical marking has been the rule to a very 
large extent in the construction of phonic readers. Personally, 
I have observed lessons where the teachers handled the dia- 
critical marking so skillfully that the words and sentences 
written on the blackboard, and so marked, were really of great 
assistance in training to correct pronunciation. But, again, 
this depends on the ability of the teacher, not on the excellence 
of a mechanical aid. 

^5 



In the initial phonic exercises and drills the appeal should be 
to the ear without reference to the printed or written form. 
Later these sounds will be represented by their respective 
letters or symbols. While it is necessary to emphasize the 
sound element in the first year reading, it is a mistake to culti- 
vate an unnatural tone quality. As pupils begin to read com- 
binations of sounds as words and sentences, it is not advisable 
to halt them at every error of enunciation, less the children 
acquire the habit of attending mainly to the sounds to the 
exclusion of the idea or the thought which the words and sen- 
tences express. 

It is because of a mistaken ideal of the aim of their work 
that teachers frequently are lead to place oral reading as the 
only reading to be taught. On the contrary, as Miss Laing 
succinctly puts it, reading is the grasp of thought through the 
written characters, and the teacher must guard against accept- 
ing as reading mere word pronunciation, no matter how 
fluently expressed. This can be achieved through the proper 
use of the question and by frequent oral reproduction as free 
as the vocabulary of the child and the completeness of the 
story will permit. 

This may seem slow work, difiicult to succeed in, but it is 
a training which with experience will be more fruitful of results 
than almost any other feature of school work. The child who 
learns to read by a method which develops his thought power, 
even though the amount covered be limited in quantity, will 
in future years be able with his own efforts to think into the 
content of the supplementary reading, and to grasp the mean- 
ing of the text in his history and geography text books, instead 
of leaning, as is so often the case, on the teacher or other 
pupils for guidance and explanation. He is getting the most 
valuable training that the first year of his school life can give. 
He is forming habits of listening with attentive ear, and read- 
ing with appreciation of the meaning. He is acquiring a readv 

i6 



recognition of the forms of the words he is asked to read, 
words that suggest ideas, famiHar and interesting to him. 
The desire to read grows because the child finds pleasure in 
the occupation, for, when properly taught and practised in 
the class or at home, reading is not work. But the young 
teacher may properly ask, " How can I secure this happy condi- 
tion ? " The answer is, from the very beginning train pupils to 
read silently as an aid to grasping content. Make the silent 
reading an active agent in training to correct oral reading. 
But the teacher may say that she has not time to wait for the 
appreciation of the content, for this silent reading, that she 
must finish so many pages in a week, or that she must com- 
plete in one or two lessons some long fairy myth or children's 
classic. In such cases it is indeed hard to expect results, 
which without the show or glitter are much more substantial 
and lasting. 

But with reading matter that in the first years consists of 
short simple sentences, well graded and logically connected, 
full of interesting content, real progress is assured by using 
the so-called thought method. Such reading gives sufficient 
repetition to impress the word pictures and makes use of 
lessons whose content deals with experiences, activities, and 
environments familiar to the child. 

This is the kind of reading matter that Professor McMurry 
advocates when he says, " The more closely the written or 
printed words are related to the child's activities, or the more 
dependent those activities are upon the knowledge of word 
form, the quicker and more natural will be their mastery." 

On this point Professor M. V. O'Shea, in a recent article in 
Science on " Popular Misconception Concerning Precocity in 
Children," takes a very decided stand against false ideals 
in teaching children to read classics beyond their powers of 
comprehension and assimilation. He states that while some 
children seem to be able at a very early age to read the works 

17 



of profound thinkers, such children have simply gained a cer- 
tain degree of familiarity with a peculiar kind of visual object, 
which is an extremely mechanical sort of thing to do, requir- 
ing no very high degree of mentality. 

" One may be able to recognize words so as to be able to 
pronounce them, while one's experience is far from giving 
one the key to their contents, and thus enabling one to read 
in the true sense of the word. It is a simple matter of psy- 
chology that reading for content, instead of simply for verbal 
recognition, cannot go far beyond the individual's experience." 

With short sentences, or as they are called in the first years, 
stories, the child is trained to grasp the story as a whole. The 
words are either famihar by association or the teacher has 
made them plain and clear by explanation; therefore there 
should be no halting delivery in the reading of the story. It 
is because of this training to grasp the whole sentence that 
this method has been called the sentence method. It is be- 
cause it trains the pupils to study content and to think, that 
it is called the thought method, but by whatever name it is 
called, when combined with sensible and systematic phonic 
drills, it is undoubtedly the most effective in results, and we 
can understand why Dr. Maxwell placed this habit of taking 
in as much of a line or sentence in a single glance as possible, 
as the first of the habits he recommended in connection with 
the teaching and learning to read. 

It does not require special manuals or technical training to 
make successful teaching when such simple and sometimes so- 
called old-fashioned methods are advocated. There is nothing 
mysterious or bizarre in their application, and a good teacher 
will get good results by devoting to the work of reading only 
the regular time allowed in the course. 

Probably there is nothing more disappointing to the teacher 
who is really striving for success than to have pupils stand 
and read as if every word was being pulled into the lesson 

i8 



by the forelock. And yet the cause in nearly all instances 
of halting delivery is the teacher's neglect of careful explana- 
tion combined with a desire to cover a certain ground within 
a limited time. The child is no more to be blamed than would 
be the adult for such reading, if the latter did not understand 
what he was trying to express and the words were unfamiliar 
to him. Professor O'Shea very aptly says on this point, " Try 
any adult in reading a passage in which the words are quite 
unfamiliar, so that he has to give attention to each one sep- 
arately, and you will find he does not read with any more 
expression than some children in your room, who seem to you 
rather stupid and lifeless." 

In order to make the pupils familiar with the content the 
first necessity is careful preparation for each lesson by the 
teacher. It is the questioning of the teacher that awakens the 
thought and curiosity of the child. It is the questioning of 
the child that often displays his interest in the content. With 
children of the first years in the school, teachers should fol- 
low different methods of questioning. For instance, the ques- 
tions of the teacher may be written on the board, and the 
answers given orally by the children, or the oral questions of 
the children may be answered in sentences written on the 
board. The questioning must be on the content of the lesson 
so that the child may be trained to grasp the thought, and 
the language used, especially in the written answers, must be 
in words familiar to the pupils. This questioning in the prep- 
aration and later in the review can be utilized for various 
practical purposes. The good teacher can train children to 
correct forms of expression and emphasis by taking some one 
sentence in the lesson and emphasizing in turn each one of 
the important words in the story. For instance, the sentence, 
" This little fairy is very beautiful." This little fairy is very 
beautiful. This little fairy is very beautiful. This little fairy 
is very beautiful. 

19 



All of these elements in the work of word mastery, phonics, 
exercises to cultivate the proper emphasis, etc., while important, 
must be considered merely as means to an end, and therefore 
must occupy a place relatively subordinate in the field. The 
efficiency of this work is proved when it has been so thor- 
oughly performed that the child unconsciously makes use of 
the mechanics as an aid in reading while he devotes his atten- 
tion and thought mainly to the content of the lesson. 

The establishment of a proper relation between form and 
content should be an aim of every teacher. Unfortunately 
present methods often emphasize one or the other. The 
author of a reader, as well as the teacher, must discern 
not only what is most interesting to the child now, but also 
that which will count most in his future training. 

If pleasurable interest, or mere amusement is to be our only 
guide in selecting reading material, it is a simple matter to 
supply a child with unlimited nursery rhymes and fairy stories. 
Children prefer this reading matter, but it would be a mis- 
take to limit reading content to this material, for the learning 
of any art cannot be merely a pleasant wandering down a 
shady lane. Education is labor as well as play, and though 
the so-called soft pedagogy seems at times the easiest way, the 
final results of such training are often found to be super- 
ficial and transitory. As Aliss Arnold says, we may begin 
with that which appeals with greatest interest to their child 
life, but we must not confine ourselves to this. Children must 
be led to a fuller enjoyment and a wider interest, by always 
offering something more than that which merely satisfies their 
desire for enjoyment. 

The ideal content aims to make the reading lesson a think- 
ing lesson. The teacher must lead the pupil to a desire to 
express the thoughts of the writer, and when he is thus trained 
the child will carry the power beyond the limits of his formal 

20 



reading to the supplementary reading, and to the home study 
of the text books. 

This training to interpret the content of the lesson in the 
child's own language should be one of the chief duties of the 
teacher in the primary grades. She can give this training by 
asking questions which in their sequence cover a topical out- 
line of the lesson; the pupils in their answers using the lan- 
guage of the book in conjunction with their own growing 
vocabulary. This exercise develops the thought power of 
pupils by compelling them to read the content attentively, and 
at the same time it develops careful habits of expression. This 
work will relieve the monotonous oral reading in the earliest 
years. In fact, those who have studied the subject of reading 
closely know that there is too much oral reading in the first, 
second, and third years of the course, and not nearly enough in 
the sixth, seventh, and eighth years. Even with the formal 
readers, which are mainly made up of interesting story con- 
tent, children are required to read orally lesson after lesson, 
with little or no opportunity for silent reading, assimilation of 
the content, or free lively reproduction. Such teaching vir- 
tually ignores the content side and attends entirely to the 
formal oral reading. 

The measure of success in such teaching is often found in 
the answer to the question, how well can my pupils read aloud ? 
Seldom is the question asked, how much do they understand 
of their reading? It is the just balance of oral and silent read- 
ing that attains really successful results. As good oral reading 
must be based on careful training in enunciation, pronuncia- 
tion, and articulation, so the silent reading must be based on 
the understanding of the content. As the dramatic element 
in reading must be utilized to develop expression, so the study 
of the meaning of the story and its moral, if there be a moral, 
must be used to make silent reading an effective exercise. A 
real teacher knows that her pupils are able to read expressively 

21 



as soon as they grasp short phrases or sentences as wholes. 
Professor O'Shea calls this power " the very first step in the 
attainment of good expression in reading, as indeed it is the 
first step in the mastery of reading, from the standpoint of 
appreciation of content." Here again it is well to emphasize 
the importance of phonic work, because though understanding 
of the content, proper use of dramatization, grasping of sen- 
tences as units, all count for expressive reading, unless the 
pupils are carefully trained to a clear enunciation and a dis- 
tinct articulation, the oral reading will count for little in the 
training of the child. 

During the first two years the reading lessons present simple 
words which by their recurrence become familiar to the pupils. 
Some of these words through their phonic similarities may be 
grouped together, and these become the stock words which the 
pupils use constantly in their drills and exercises. Occasionally 
these stock words can be taught objectively, others are taught 
through use in familiar context, and the teacher can make fre- 
quent and efifective use of the association of ideas in the teach- 
ing of these words. 

The definite results obtained from the use of phonetic 
methods are especially satisfactory. By combining phonic 
elements new words are formed, but these words should be 
words of meaning to the child. They should fit into the pupil's 
life and experience. They should be words which the child 
will find useful in his rapidly developing speaking and read- 
ing vocabulary. 

It is a mistake to attempt to teach by any method twenty or 
thirty new words to a second or third year class, and young 
teachers sometimes attempt this impossible feat by drilling 
on the use of phonic similarities in preparation for a reading 
lesson. The pupils may pronounce them correctly, they may 
even recognize and read them, but they cannot grasp their 
meaning, they cannot use them understanding^, and such 

22 



words disappear from the knowledge of the child as rapidly 
as they were seemingly acquired. The question the teacher 
should ask in connection with this phase of the work is, do 
these words represent objects or ideas which the children 
know or can apperceive. If the question is answered nega- 
tively, the teacher, if she is compelled to teach such words in 
preparation for a reading lesson, has a task well nigh impos- 
sible to finish satisfactorily. 

While every letter or character that represents a sound is a 
phonogram in the stricter sense, we generally apply the term 
to those combinations of letters which are used in building 
up a considerable portion of the common words of our lan- 
guage, as er, al, il, ing, ight, etc. These are typical of the 
phonograms most frequently used in word building by the 
blending of sounds. 

This blending is one of the most valuable of all exercises 
in teaching reading. Children learn to form words easily and 
rapidly by blending the phonograms which are merely conso- 
nant sounds, as s and r, with sound syllables as ing, or ight. 
The pupils like this synthetic work because it seems such a 
simple process, especially if the w^ords formed are words full 
of meaning to them. Such a pleasant introduction to the 
work spurs on the learners and the teacher can lead them to 
attempt sentence formation by combining the words thus 
formed into expressions of some famihar idea or activity. 
With words of familiar meaning for use in this exercise, 
the teacher has eliminated the most serious objection to pho- 
netic teaching, namely, that words containing similar sounds 
were often joined together in sentences frequently puerile 
and nonsensical. Sense was frequently sacrificed to sound 
and w^ords were taught and drilled upon merely because of 
their similarity in sound to words previously known. In con- 
cluding this description of the phonetic method wx may accept 
its ideal realization in this brief statement. Present the 

23 



simplest phonograms, the sounds of the consonants, first — 
follow with simple vowel sounds, combinations of such letters 
as r, u, 1, d, t — blend these two elements into wholes that rep- 
resent objects or ideas to the child, and build up sentences that 
have meaning and thought. 

In order that the work should produce effective results the 
teacher must vigilantly and ceaselessly guard against careless 
enunciation. Sometimes this faulty enunciation is the result, 
not of carelessness, but of the child's foreign tongue or his 
imperfect vocal or auditory organs. When the cause is phys- 
ical, vocal exercises and drills will be of great assistance to 
the teacher. When the cause is a foreign home environment, 
or the careless patois or slang of the street, the uniform pres- 
entation of correct models by the teacher, side by side with 
systematic and frequent phonic drills and exercises, are cer- 
tain to assist in correcting the defects. 

One of the serious objections to concert recitation in this 
work is the difficulty experienced in detecting mistakes in 
enunciation and articulation. Again such concert recitations 
often result in unnaturalness or monotony of expression, be- 
cause the entire class swings along wath little or none of the 
thought of content that is the sine qua non of correct ex- 
pression. 

Teachers frequently make effective use of the drills on type 
words and sentences apart from and preceding the reading 
lesson. Occasionally pupils are trained to whisper the words 
of the lesson in a semi-silent reading before the formal exer- 
cise. Such whispering, if it does not disturb the class, 
affords an opportunity for the motor activity of the child 
during his studying. 

Miss Arnold suggests the following plan for studying the 
reading lesson. Individual pupils w^hisper sentences to the 
teacher. These sentences are written on the board and other 
pupils are called upon to read them. Of course the words 

24 



in such sentences must be somewhat familiar to the class or 
the lesson would be merely a guessing exercise. 

In all formal readers for primary grades illustration is a 
very important feature, and the study of the illustrations with 
oral exercises in sentence formation thereon are productive of 
good results. Efficient teachers make the fullest use of the 
illustrations given in the readers. They do not depend entirely 
upon the book illustrations, but make collections of pictures 
interesting to child life and use them as an inspiration for 
oral and written compositions. This is one of the many fea- 
tures of oral language work which should precede the regular 
reading lesson. All such oral exercises tend to famiharize 
pupils with the words which a child uses in his every-day con- 
versation, or which are found in his reading lessons. With 
foreign children thdse exercises are specially useful, and a 
good teacher wall always avoid harsh personal criticisms for 
mistakes in the informal oral English exercises. The teacher 
should make a special effort to encourage the foreigners in her 
class, or those who are naturally timid. In this way she will 
inspire pupils to attempt expression of their thoughts and 
ideas, and gradually give them the confidence necessary for 
further effort. 

During such oral exercises the teacher should make the 
fullest use of sentences illustrating the use of words. This 
is a period of school life when the use of objects in the 
earliest grades impresses the associations of idea with word, 
first oral and later printed or written. 

The oral language work is not only a necessity for first year 
classes but all through the grades it should be a preparation for 
the reading lesson, and the teacher who neglects the informal 
explanations and the conversation on the content of the les- 
son is neglecting a very effective aid to the proper appreciation 
of the reading. Any teacher who attempts the reading of the 
Lady of the Lake, Evangeline, one of Shakespeare's plays, or 

25 



a speech of Webster, without preparatory explanation or con- 
versation is neglecting one of the surest means of obtaining 
successful results. In the first three years all this preparation 
is a decided aid in the thought development, which is an essen- 
tial purpose of the reading lesson. In the study of each 
sentence it arouses interest because the child knows the content 
of her reading, and it makes the reproduction of the story in 
the child's own language a comparatively simple process. 

This question of reproduction is one of the most troublesome 
features of the work in reading. Teachers often find that the 
class will read a lesson fluently, will answer individual ques- 
tions quite readily, but will fail utterly when asked to repro- 
duce the simple story in language not absolutely the same as 
the lesson. This failure is specially marked when the children 
are asked to tell the story to some visitor, or to the principal 
of the school, and the teacher occasionally explains the failure 
by stating that the children are too bashful or that they are 
frightened. Such explanation may account for some hesita- 
tion, but it cannot account for the failure of an entire class 
of pupils in reproducing the story. 

I believe that if the children have really understood the 
content during the reading they will readily reproduce the 
story, no matter who happens to be in the room. The point is 
to give little ones the necessary confidence in their ability 
to tell what they know, and a very simple device for fostering 
such confidence is the following: Occasionally, at the conclu- 
sion of the reading lesson, let the teacher send to a neighboring 
classroom for one or two pupils. Then let the teacher ask 
the pupils who have just read the lesson to tell to the visiting 
pupils the story that they have just read. I have found 
that children appreciated, in such case, that they are telling 
something to other children, and thus are more likely to feel 
confident of their ability to express themselves and more 
ambitious to repeat the story that they have just enjoyed. 

26 



The teacher who has developed the lesson by frequent and 
apt questioning need not worry about the success of her pupils' 
attempts to reproduce the story. If the content of the lesson 
is not beyond the children's powers of assimilation, and the 
teachers' preparation and presentation of the lesson have been 
conducted according to good method, the pupils will respond 
readily to requests for free reproduction of the story. The teach- 
er's question is the life of the lesson, and the best preparation 
for future reproduction. Even in the first year the questioning 
devices recommended by Miss Laing are certain to have effect- 
ive results. She would have the pupils ask questions on the 
lesson, questions which would be answered by the teacher in 
sentences on the blackboard. Then reversing the process, the 
teacher would write questions on the board and the children 
would answer orally. If the story is illustrated the teacher 
should begin the reading lesson by questioning on the picture 
so as to arouse the pupils' interest in the story, to quicken 
their thinking powers, and to give them confidence in their 
ability to express their thoughts by the picture. 

All this work is but practical exemplification of that excel- 
lent definition of a teacher's aim, which Dr. Rowe gives in his 
" Habit Formation " — " The organization of the child's ex- 
perience, whether that experience is made up largely of sense 
impressions, of thought elaborations, or of muscular move- 
ment." Unfortunately, instead of organizing the child's ex- 
perience, the teacher who gives a reading lesson without care- 
ful preparation, if she questions at all, questions in a manner 
that results in haphazard, unsystematic, and disorganized 
responses. 

Where the teacher's work of preparation has been a real 
success the lesson may be assimilated and reproduced even 
without an oral reading by the pupils. I have observed 
teachers present the meaning and use of new words for a read- 
ing lesson, teach the correct pronunciation and develop the 

27 



story and thought of the lesson, and then, instead of an oral 
reading, allow the pupils time for a silent reading of the lesson. 
This silent reading completed, the order was given to close 
books, and I have Hstened to the pupils as they told the story 
in their own language with an interest that proved conclu- 
sively that they had appreciated and assimilated the thoughts 
of the author. 

It is well to impress the value of silent reading and the 
appreciation of content as a necessary aid to expressive oral 
reading. By such oral reading, or by the free lively reproduc- 
tion of the story, the teacher can judge whether the thought 
has been intelligently grasped, and pupils are certain to find 
their greatest pleasurable experience in telling to others the 
thoughts and experiences they have grasped from their 
reading. 

If the best use is made of the silent reading as an efficient 
aid to oral reading the reading period becomes as it should be, 
one of the most pleasant features of the school work. We 
all know that instead of being a time of pleasure the reading 
period becomes one of the most wearisome periods of the day, 
whenever the teacher insists on calling on all the poor readers 
in order that they may labor through their sentences or para- 
graphs while the other pupils are forced to remiain idle 
Hsteners. 

With the poor readers of the class there is excellent oppor- 
tunity for group teaching, and the teacher can through this 
device attain much more than she can by taking these pupils 
with the entire class. Let them listen attentively while the 
good readers recite, but do not call upon them to read when 
such recitation merely affords opportunities for correcting 
mistake after mistake, to the utter weariness of the good 
readers. If the poor readers are taken alone, the teacher may 
be able gradually to give them confidence and strength. 

Even in the highest grades, as Superintendent Hughes 

28 



points out, the silent reading can be utilized to train pupils to 
think. The teacher can write from the text book of science, 
history, geography, or grammar, some paragraph containing a 
thought or idea which pupils cannot grasp easily. Having 
written this paragraph on the board the pupils should be given 
time to read and assimilate, and then, erasing the paragraph, 
to reproduce the thought as they have grasped it. This is one 
of the simple devices for training children to think which 
could be practised much more frequently than it is. The pupil 
who knows that in his reading he is telling something to all 
the class, and not merely reciting for the approbation of his 
teacher, has attained success, and teachers frequently make 
excellent use of the device of having children face their class- 
mates when they read. Under such circumstances the child 
is induced to make a special effort to read so that all the other 
pupils can understand what he is reading. It is occasionally a 
good plan to have the other pupils look up from their books 
at the reader, because in this way he is spurred to read under- 
standingly, knowing that his fellow pupils are following him, 
not in their readers, but through his recitation. 

As Professor Huey states, in such reading even if a pupil 
occasionally substitutes words that are not in the text, but 
words that express equally well the content, the reading is 
not a failure. On the contrary, it is occasionally a proof that 
the child has grasped the thought, and has sufficient command 
of a vocabulary to express that thought in the language of 
the book, supplemented with the words of his own vocabulary. 

In concluding this outline of methods in teaching children 
to read, I desire to impress the fact that when the foundation 
is well laid, the pupil is prepared for that kind of reading 
which will count most in his future education. The 
learned to like reading, to appreciate what he reads, can easily 
teacher is building for the future, and the child who has 
be led in higher grades to take up good literature as one of 

29 



the great pleasures of his life. Children never select inferior 
reading because they look for such class of literature, but 
merely because they know no better, and through every grade 
of the school course, from the lowest to the highest, the good 
teacher should bear this thought in mind in her reading lesson. 
We are giving in the reading lesson a power to the boy or 
girl that will be with him for all time, that may grow into a 
stronger asset with each recurring year if well directed, but 
on the other hand may develop into a veritable Frankenstein 
if used to attain familiarity with the literature that perverts 
truth and justice, or that degrades the ideals of self-respect 
and moral training. 



30 



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THE CATHOLIC 



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